The Silver Spoon

by Kansuke Naka

  Also occasionally, my aunt took me to the Lord Dainichi30 close by to play. As I shook the thick, twisted rope to strike the “alligator-mouth” gong at its top, my aunt threw in coins and prayed. Then she would alternately touch my head and the Lord Pindola’s31 head so my brain disease might be cured, before lightly rubbing her own eyes. The wooden base of the Pindola was exposed, made shiny and grubby with finger marks, as he glared with large eyes, sitting cross-legged on the dais. In that temple, as in any other temple enshrining the Dainichi, there was a well over which hung offertory towels in persimmon and flower colors. It also had a dipper made by warping a piece of wood floating in its basin, the same kind that was held by O-Tsuru of Awa no Naruto32 in my picture book. My aunt would gratefully draw water from the well, cool her small eyes with it, and, as she opened them, say, “Gracious Dainichi, I think my eyes can see a bit better.”

  It was believed that this particular Dainichi’s oracles were very accurate, and there were people who came great distances to draw one. One day my aunt decided to find out what the Dainichi had to say about my illness. She went into the wing of the hall where a paper screen was erected.

  “Excuse me, sir.” When she said this, from inside there was, a “Yes, ma’am,” and a young monk whose head was freshly tonsured popped out his face. My aunt told him the whole story in great detail and asked for an oracle. The monk went to the front of the principal image, offered prayers for a while, and shook the box many times with a big, rhythmical rattle. Then he drew out an oracle, came over to us, and carefully copied what it said on another sheet of paper for us. Since my aunt could not read “square characters,”33 he explicated each one for her. In effect, the oracle said this child would become healthy in the future and lead a happy life. On our way home my aunt was all happiness.

  13

  About a hundred yards away toward a more deserted area, there lived an old man and woman who raised several chickens in a vacant lot encircled by an althea hedge. They sold cheap candies. I became terribly fond of the straw-thatched roof, the first I’d ever seen, the torn mud walls, and the well-sweep that made a grinding noise. Going there with my aunt to buy candies was one of the things I really looked forward to. The old man and woman were both hard of hearing and were slow to come out. If you called out to them a number of times, one of them would trudge out and open the lids of candy boxes here and there. Kinkatō, kingyokutō, tenmontō, mijinbō.34 If you hold in your mouth the bamboo tube filled with bean jelly, you smell the fresh bamboo before the jelly slips out onto your tongue. The Ota-san35 in a candy laughs and cries, turning her face this way and that. If you bite apart the one with blue and red stripes and suck, a sweet wind comes out of its spaces.

  The one I liked best was called the cinnamon stick. It was an aruhei36 stick coated with powdered cinnamon and had, within its rich sweetness, a provocative smell of cinnamon. One terribly rainy day, for some reason I felt a sudden pity for the old man and woman and at the same time wanted a cinnamon stick. I was so insistent that my aunt took me out, carrying me on her back covered by a half-coat. Unfortunately, they had no cinnamon sticks that day and I was so disappointed that I wept all the way home. If I drank “cow’s milk”37 without protest or when I spent the whole day playing without whimpering, she would buy me a rattler38 as a reward. It was shaped like a peach or a clam and dyed in red and white stripes. I would come home on my aunt’s back, shaking it, enjoying it, and crack it open when we reached the house. A little drum made of paper or a flute made of tin would come out. I would treasure them as if they were the most valuable things in the world. Some of them came in triangular wrappings of mud-colored leather, their joins sealed with a portrait of an actor.

  14

  Born feeble and lacking exercise, I was dyspeptic and prone to forget about eating until, as if I were a queen bee, food was brought to my mouth, giving a great deal of trouble to my aunt. Sometimes she put rice balls in a box that had once contained bean paste and, pretending we were on a pilgrimage to the Ise Shrine,39 she would lead me round and round the mountain-shaped mound in the garden, finally clapping her hands and offering prayers in front of the stone lantern, then sitting me down on a stone under a pine tree to eat from the lunch box. Once she took me, along with my younger sister and her wet nurse, to a field where evening primroses were in bloom, and we ate the rice rolls wrapped in seaweed that we’d brought along. From the cliff where stands of large cedars, Chinese hackberries, and zelkovas rose up, we had a sweeping view of glowing Fuji, Hakone, Ashigara, and other mountains. Unusually happy, I was eating my lunch when, with unfortunate timing, someone came walking toward us. I immediately threw out my chopsticks and said I’m going home. Of all living creatures, human beings were the ones I disliked the most.

  TAKENOKO: BAMBOO SHOOTS

  So I did not find any food tasty, but my aunt, with her unique powers of persuasion, could impart a fine taste to anything. I liked clam preserves because those lovely clams were supposed to crawl, with their tongues out, before Princess Oto in the Dragon Palace.40 And I liked bamboo shoots because the story of Mōsō’s filial piety41 was interesting. If you wash off a chubby bamboo shoot, around the culm toward its base there are rows of short roots and purple warts. If you hold its skin up to the sun, you can see golden down, and white stripes like ivory on the other side. If the skin was large, I put it on my head as a cap; if small, the bristles were removed to wrap pickled plums. If I sucked on the latter for a while, the skin turned red as if dyed and the sour juice seeped out. I also liked black bamboo. Watching these shoots boiling in an earthen pot, turning round and round, looking truly delicious, and seeing my aunt tasting them, even my queen bee self would feel saliva flowing near my back teeth. If I sometimes acted spoiled, refusing to take up my chopsticks, she would put a tiny painted bowl to my mouth to feed me, saying, “You are a baby sparrow, a baby sparrow.”

  The red sea bream looks beautiful,42 and that its head carries the seven tools43 and that Lord Ebisu44 holds the fish in his arm makes a child happy. Its eyeballs are delicious. The outer layer is crumbly, but the core is soft yet unyielding, and no matter how long you chew on it, you can’t chew it right up. When you spit it out, a semi-transparent ball drops on the plate with a clink. That its teeth are white is also good.

  15

  In those days there was a madman called Mr. So-and-So. Old folks said that when young he was obsessed with learning and always read books. Then he grew boastful of his scholarship, and went out of his mind. He let his hair grow wild and wore scorched rags on his body that looked almost scaly with grime and soot. Leaning on a thick bamboo cane, deep in thought, he quietly wandered about barefoot in winter or summer. When someone who remembered his past gave him rice balls and such, he would carry them home on his open palms as carefully as a priest holding an alms bowl. But if someone happened to give him something to wear, he would put it on with visible reluctance for one or two days, only to discard it for his rags.

  He lived in a cave he had dug out near a farmhouse about two hundred yards away from us, and he kept a fire burning inside all year round. He would come out of the cave as he pleased and walk as far as he liked in whichever direction caught his fancy. When bored, he would simply turn on his heels to go home. Come rain or wind, he would be seen walking about in the neighborhood. As a result, when nobody saw him for a whole day, they said he must be in a bad mood, and when he didn’t come out for three days, four days, they would wonder if he was well. Oddly, if he encountered a woman on the street, he would take a couple of steps back and spit as though he had seen something vile. My aunt, who was fastidious, had been concerned about the grubby, smelly man ever since she first saw him, and would hurriedly turn away before he had time to take his three steps back. One day, when on our way to the cheap cookie store we bumped into him, she couldn’t take it any more.

  “Would you kindly wash your face for me? I’ll give you five pennies.” With these words she started to pull out her purse from her sash. T
he man looked taken aback and stopped. Then, shaking his head with great disgust, forgetting even to spit, he strode away.

  This madman lived until I grew to be a normal kid. Then one day the rumor spread that he had been burned to death during the night. Although I was a bit afraid, I went to his cave, but all I saw was his bamboo cane and unburned kindling.

  16

  Saying she’d let me play Which-Nut,45 my aunt would knock down nuts from a white camellia tree, although because she had poor eyesight and not much strength, she mainly slapped down twigs and leaves. Which-Nut was a game from her province; you chose camellia seeds of a certain shape, with players all putting out the same number, then taking turns to shake all their seeds in their hands before throwing them out on the tatami. The person with the greatest number of seeds with white bud spots showing won the round and all the seeds. Each seed had strengths and weaknesses depending on its shape and center of gravity. Some people, I was told, lacquered their seeds for adornment or slyly poured lead into them to strengthen them. You collect the nuts that were knocked down, and crack open their shells to find seeds shaped like a boat or a turnip, and sometimes shiny, all packed snugly into their compartments. They are called mō, jā, toko, kai,46 and such, according to their shape. I recall spending a whole quiet rainy day playing Which-Nut with several dozen seeds.

  KINOMEDOCHI: WHICH-NUT

  Come summer, my aunt would point to clumps of clouds of various shapes that moved in the glittering sky overflowing with sunlight, telling me, as if it were all true, that that one was Lord Monju47 or that one was Lord Fugen Bosatsu.48 One day, tired of playing, I was lying by myself, waiting for a cloud shaped like a Buddha who would protect me to come along. However, the cloud that happened by, which looked like a Buddha lying supine, suddenly collapsed into such a terrifying form that I decided that a monster, assuming the form of a Buddha, had come to get me, and ran off to my aunt. From then on, I named the cloud of that particular shape a Dead Man’s Buddha and, whenever I saw it, promptly hid myself.

  Besides the weapons for the Yamazaki Battle, the leather basket also had toys in it, of which the drum and the shō49 were my special treasures. The black-painted pot of the shō had an arabesque lacquered on it. The long and short tubes arranged in a ring made soft, varying whistling sounds that gave my feeble nerves a pleasant sensation. The drum was small enough for my shoulder, and I liked everything about it, including its scarlet tuning cord and the interesting shape of its body. My invaluable aunt, who had dabbled in almost everything, would make me play the drum, while she herself played a larger drum on her knee in nice accompaniment.

  Small items, such as a rabbit’s paw made into a makeup brush, the “crane’s beak” for rubbing the throat when a bone got stuck, and the brass mallet used to do something with sword-hilt ornaments, were all kept in what was called Kanpon’s drawer in the cabinet with the many small drawers. I never volunteered to name which one I wanted. My aunt would take them out one by one while I whimpered, shaking my head, until she hit upon the right one. Even so, in most instances, if she took out the Divine Dog and the Rouge Ox, my mood would change for the better. Sometimes I would develop a dislike for something and toss it any which way. Even then she wouldn’t lose her temper but, concerned that something might be wrong with me, put her hand on my forehead. If I had a temperature, I was taken to the doctor at once. I didn’t like that, so if she put her hand on my forehead, I would visibly lose heart and grow quiet.

  During the chrysanthemum season, she would pick chrysanthemums in the backyard and make a “chrysanthemum rug” to calm me. You spread on a sheet of paper various petals of different chrysanthemums like an Arabian design and press them. After a while you remove the press, and you have a fragrant rug. I liked chrysanthemum rugs very much.

  At times I would dump out all the picture books filling my bookcase and make my endlessly patient aunt tell me one story after another. If I’d been scolded for something, after a good deal of weeping, I would then sulk. Angry at even those who, making an excuse of one kind or another, came to comfort me, I would console myself in a corner of a room, spreading picture books around me or playing with toys. At such times the Divine Dog, the Rouge Ox, the magic mallet, and the princess in the picture book, though they didn’t say a word, soothed me with their kindness. Then I would become sorry for myself for having stopped weeping and tears would start flowing again. Sobbing, I would tell myself, “I don’t care. I have all these friends,” while resenting everyone else.

  17

  At night I played with toys dumped in the dining room where my family was gathered. As you become sleepy, everything starts to get on your nerves. So if I began rubbing my eyes and fretting, it was time for my aunt to take me to bed.

  “My, you’ve gotten sleepy,” she’d say and put away the toys littered all around and push my neck down to have me bow on the floor and say to everyone: “Be well and happy.”

  I would resist, protesting that I didn’t want to sleep, yet I would eventually be pulled into the bedroom where my aunt used to sleep with me and the wet-nurse with my younger sister. At sunset the andon lantern50 in the room was lighted and the bedding prepared51 so that I could go to sleep as soon as my bad mood began to show. In winter my aunt would take a nightrobe from the several that had been left over the foot-warmer until they were almost warm enough to emit steam and exaggeratedly blow on it before tenderly wrapping my thin body in it. One of the coverlets had chrysanthemum figures, and another, probably imported from the West, the figures of golden-crested wrens and twigs on a maroon calico background. These coverlets held the fragrance of sunlight, and I loved to smell them, burying my face in their fluffy abundance.

  ANDON: LANTERNS

  Since I was afraid of the dim light, after putting me into bed my aunt used to take out a new wick from the drawer attached to the lantern and add it. As she dipped the end of the new wick in the oil and put it next to the old one deeply sunken in oil, it would sparkle crisply and catch fire. Her hands would tremble as, with some difficulty, she pulled in the other end of the wick, which tended to stick out over the rim on the other side of the oil plate. Then from the spout of the oil pot she would pour amber-colored vegetable oil into the plate. The fluffy wick, the way it absorbed the oil, the shape of the wick holder, the smell of the burning oil, all such things. More than anything I disliked the corpses of insects lying black at the bottom of the oil and the burnt-out tip of the wick sticking to the rim of the plate. So, every day, after disposing of the used oil, she would scrape off the black wick tip with a blunt, broad-blade knife.

  To this coward, the lantern was a little weird. From my bed where I lay with my sleepy eyes wide open, the spindle-shaped flame with the wick tip at its core looked like a goblin with a single long, narrow eye. As my aunt stuck her head inside the lantern to stir up the wick, almost burning her nose with the flame, her gigantic shadow reflected on the lantern paper made me wonder if she herself wasn’t some kind of goblin.

  Then my aunt, while putting the matches back in the drawer, would offer prayers for the souls of the insects who were lured to the light and burned to death. Once I couldn’t sleep for fear that the Devil was lurking in the alcove ceiling where the light didn’t reach. My aunt struggled to her feet and raised the lantern toward that part of the ceiling.

  “See? No one’s hiding up there.” In those days I believed the Devil was something scary-black with wild hair falling over itself.

  “Call me if you get scared during the night,” my aunt would say. “You know I’m fierce. They’d all run away.”

  Then she would tell stories until I fell asleep. She may not have been able to read any “square characters,” but she had heard and memorized an astonishing amount and knew an almost inexhaustible number of stories. Also, she had the knack of smoothly filling in the parts she’d forgotten with her own fanciful imagination. She gave different expressions and voices to different people, whether samurai or princesses, and would even put on
the face of a monster for me which, in the dim light of the lantern, looked very real.

  18

  Among the most pitiful were the stories of the child who piles stones on the Riverbed of Sai52 and the Hatsune drum of The Thousand Cherry Trees. My aunt would sing a snatch of that pilgrim’s song in a sorrowful tone before adding explanations. I could not understand the whys and wherefores adequately, but a child who has troubled his mother just by being in her womb but has died before doing anything to repay his indebtedness is building a cairn to atone for the sin, piling stones forlornly on the Riverbed of Sai, when a demon comes along and harasses him by destroying the cairn with his iron cane. But then the gentle Lord Jizō53 protects him by hiding him under the sleeve of his robe. Each time I heard this story, I was oppressed with a suffocating gloom, the thought of the fate of the poor child making me sob uncontrollably. Aunt would rub me on the back, saying, “Don’t worry, don’t worry. There, we have the Lord Jizō.”

  I always thought that the Lord Jizō was a Buddha who looked exactly like the stone buddha who stood at the roadside with his staff.

  Brought up solely by my aunt who was born Buddhist, I made no discrimination between animals and humans, and I heard the story of the pitiable baby fox whose parents were skinned alive as if it were happening to myself. The white parent foxes cried out, “Our poor baby! Our poor baby!” even as they were being skinned, I was told. This was the most pitiful of the three stories about a drum that I knew. It was not the drum that fell from heaven, wrapped in a mysterious cloud,54 or the soundless drum that a cruel person is said to have made from brocade,55 but an ordinary drum made from the skins of foxes living in a field of Yamato Province that cried out of love for their child. Even now, when I think of this story, the feeling that I had then stirs my heart.56